Evidence-Based Approach Quotes

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world.

The best practice is inspired by theory.

The edifice of science not only requires material, but also a plan. Without the material, the plan alone is but a castle in the air-a mere possibility; whilst the material without a plan is but useless matter.

The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.

This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion.

Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us. Still, the Yahoos never rest.

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry.

I don't take a stance to score political points. That's not what I'm about. That's not why the people hired me. If I do take a stand on something, it's because I've thoroughly researched it.

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's times, scientists have worked in the same sort of way: They show a great respect for experiment and observation, They don't cherry pick data, They take a skeptical approach to what they do. And then scientists work together to get a consensus as to what should be believed And that generates very reliable knowledge and that reliable knowledge drives innovation

Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.

In these researches I followed the principles of the experimental method that we have established, i.e., that, in presence of a well-noted, new fact which contradicts a theory, instead of keeping the theory and abandoning the fact, I should keep and study the fact, and I hastened to give up the theory.

My approach has never been to start from theories to arrive at facts, but on the contrary, to try to bring out from the facts the explanatory thread without which they appear incomprehensible and elude effective action.

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

I'm not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious.

We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.

I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts.

The scientific-religious conflict ultimately is a conflict between allegiance to this method and allegiance to even an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in advance that it can never be modified.